XT Brewery in Long Crendon. Micro Brewery and Informal Shop- Craft Beers to the stars

Monday, 4 December 2017

Trappist Breweries

Pray Silence for Trappist
Beer!

What is Trappist Beer and What is a Trappist Brewery?

MONKS

Trappist beer is brewed by monks of the Order of Cistercians
of the Strict Observance. The order was founded at La Trappe Abbey in Normandy
in the seventeenth century – they broke away from the regular Cistercians for
being too soft. The Cistercians had already broken from the Benedictines as
they had preferred more hard work and dedicated worship. So the Trappists like
a bit of seriously hard manual labour, idle chit-chat is discouraged, silence
is golden. They do however like beer.

Trappist beer is more a definition of who can brew it rather
than what the beer is like. The beer must be brewed in a Trappist monastery, by
monks or under their supervision and the brewing must be for the upkeep of the
monastery and not for profit. There is legal protection of the designation
through the International Trappist Association, and currently only 11 breweries
around the world can call themselves Trappist. If you are not up to the mark on
these criteria there are ‘Abbey Beers’ - this is a more loose term
for breweries with some vague link to a monastery.

There is only one Trappist monastery in England – Mt Saint
Bernard in Leicestershire. They are currently working on building a brewery and
hope to be the world’s 12th Trappist brewer, similarly in northern Spain, San
Pedro monastery are also working towards joining the elite club.

BEERS

Although not strictly a definition of beer style, the beers
produced by the breweries have similar characteristics. The emphasis is towards
estery, fruity flavours from the unique yeast strains. Using warm, top
fermentation, the beers are high strength, low on hop impact and utilise
specialist malts and candi sugars to give warm, spicy flavours of great
complexity. The beers are mainly packaged as bottle conditioned – which
combined with their higher ABV and malt characteristics are excellent for long
term keeping. Indeed many of the beers improve their complexity with months or
years of aging in a cool dark place.

The beer categories have evolved over time and their
original meanings have wandered a little – but roughly speaking:

Patersbier – these are ‘table beers’ generally only
available in the monastery for the monks, low strength – quaffing beers

Where numbers are used, these represent ‘Belgian Beer
Degrees’ – not a university qualification, but an old school take on Original
Gravity – the measure of the density of the beer before fermentation. So
roughly a Belgian BD 6 = English OG 1060, it gives an idea on the final ABV and
the weightiness of the beer.

DRINKING

When you come to enjoy your Trappist beer glassware is all
important, both for the theatre and to enhance the aromas and flavours. Use a
goblet chalice style glass – the breweries have their own specific styles, but
collecting them all does take up a lot of cupboard space.

The bottled beers will have sediment – its personal choice
if you wish to drink that, so pour carefully after allowing the sediment to
settle.

Now consider that the finest wines are bonkers expensive –
but the finest beers in the world are within the budget of everyone!